Tag Archives: Climate Change

Yesterday morning (15th November 2016) at about 08:32, BBC radio 4 had an interview with Bernie Sanders, one of the Democratic party’s candidates who were in the running to fight the recent presidential election in the USA. Of course, it was Hillary Clinton who the party eventually put forward, but back to the BBC’s interview.

Asked what he feared now that Donald Trump has been elected as the next president. First, he replied that he was afraid racism and sexism would rise, but he didn’t stop there. Importantly, he continued to voice the very same fear that I have; that Trump believes climate change is a hoax. Mr Sanders was very clear on this, climate change is NOT a hoax and Trump’s failure to recognise that frightens him very much.

Yet Trump’s dangerous stance was hardly presented during the campaign, and the interviewer yesterday asked whether Mr Sanders thought of Donald Trump as a fascist (he didn’t), and whether he thought he would have had a better chance of beating Trump than Hillary, but there was nothing more on the climate. Similarly, the coverage of the UK general election last year and national assembly for Wales election this year barely featured the various party’s policies on greenhouse gas emissions.

It appears that much of the media won’t talk about climate change. That’s a very dangerous silence, yesterday’s interview also asked how Trump could be stopped on issues like women’s rights, given that the republicans control Congress and President Trump will be able to appoint people to the relevant court. Bernie Sanders answered that they would need to educate and mobilise millions of people, to make the political cost of implementing such measures too expensive for the republications to go ahead.

Mobilise and educate millions; that would be rather difficult if you cannot reach them because the media refuse to transmit the messages. It is time they gave the climate the coverage it needs.

In May 2010, it was announced that the recently-formed Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government had cancelled plans for a third runway at Heathrow. George Monbiot called it “the biggest victory for the environment movement since the scrapping of the last Tory government’s road-building programme.” and the BBC report claimed that “It was always common ground between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to oppose the third runway.”

How things have changed. Like the zombie road schemes that refuse to stay dead, the 3rd runway has risen from the grave to threaten the land of the living yet again. Despite his famous claim, from before he came to power, “The third runway at Heathrow is not going ahead, no ifs, no buts”, former prime minister David Cameron is at least partly responsible for the recent resurrection. After all, it was his government who set up the airports commission to report back once the 2015 general election was out of the way. His so-called ‘greenest ever’ government has therefore put one the most environmentally damaging proposals devised in recent times back on the agenda. If the Tories with this abysmal record are genuinely the greenest government ever then it is no surprise we are in the colossal mess we are in; because the previous governments must have been even worse than abysmal.

Theresa May, apparently, was also once opposed to Heathrow. Does becoming Prime Minister magically blind people to the unthinkable environmental consequences of a new runway? Her promise “to build a Britain not driven by the interests of a privileged few” now sounds terribly hollow too, since 70% of all flights are taken by people earning over £155,000 per year, against an average UK salary of £26,500. Even airline pilots apparently earn less (£78,482) than most of their passengers.

The extra runway is certainly a serious threat to the climate; in 2005 it was estimated that aviation CO2 emissions alone made up around 6.3% of UK emissions. It seems likely that UK emissions will need to be cut by more than that every year to meet our targets, and that 6.3 figure doesn’t capture the full extent of aviation’s climate impact (although nobody seems able to agree on the extent to which emitting various greenhouse gasses at attitude effects the climate, it is generally considered to be significantly worse than ground-level emissions of CO2 alone). That was without the third runway, with it aviation could account for two thirds of the UK’s entire carbon budget, what would other sectors have to do to cut enough emissions to free up enough carbon budget to ‘fund’ the aviation industry?

While Heathrow is pretty much full, many other UK airports have spare capacity. This suggests to me that Heathrow is where airlines and/or passengers want to fly to and from. Looking at it that way, there may be an argument for the third runway, but to be reconcilable with the need to curb emissions you would have to remove flights from other airports to provide the carbon ‘funding’ for Heathrow’s extra flights. Monbiot’s latest article on the topic at the time of writing states that the airports commission justified expansion via either bigger emissions cuts in other sectors (no thanks, the challenge is big enough as it is thank you) or a carbon tax to price the lower-margin routes out of existence (which as I see it is equivalent to my suggestion of cutting back flights at other airports).

I had planned to release a slightly different post this week, which would essentially have been a rant about how the two parties which dominate our political system don’t really offer a meaningful choice in some key policy areas, but I wasn’t happy with it. That may still appear at some point, after some revisions and the Welsh Assembly and Scottish parliament elections, but for now it suffices to say the following.

The Tories, and elements of the Labour party (the parts that disagree with having Jeremy Corbyn as their leader I believe), represent the ‘neo-liberal’ agenda, which includes deregulation and privatisation. George Monbiot has written much more about neo-liberalism if you want to know. Both these parties benefit from the First Past The Post voting system (FPTP), and love to claim that you must vote for them to keep the other out. This, sadly is generally true, because of FPTP. The Conservatives have even been at it in their campaign for today’s Welsh Assembly elections; don’t fall for it though because they only have a few more seats in the assembly than Plaid Cymru thanks in part to the fact that only 40 of the 60 assembly members are elected using FPTP. The other 20 seats are filled using a proportional system, so anything can happen.

Today then, at the Welsh Assembly and Scottish parliament elections, we have a chance to implement a quiet uprising against the two-party status quo, by voting for smaller parties. Here in Wales, the main choices are of course Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats, UKIP and the Greens. I believe all four of these parties have ruled out the £1bn plus second M4 around Newport, the ‘Black Route’, with most favouring the upgraded A-road alternative to a second M4, known as the ‘Blue Route’. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives have ruled out the second M4.

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The elections will be followed on Saturday (May 7th) by two events in London, which hopefully will also amount to a peaceful uprising. One is the ‘Demo For Democracy’, organised by ‘Make Votes Matter’, who are probably the latest group to make a stand against FPTP. The other is called ‘Own The Future’ and aims to counter the neo-liberal consensus on privatisation, instead protecting nationalised public services. This is organised by the ‘We Own It’ group.

Over the course of last week, BBC Wales ran a series of five half-hour ”Ask The Leader’ television programmes, broadcast from around Wales. Each featured the leader of a political party, who was questioned by the members of a small audience.

Monday’s programme featured Andrew R.T. Davies, leader of the Welsh Conservatives, UKIP’s Nathan Gill was in the spotlight on Tuesday, Kirsty Williams of the Liberal Democrats took to the stage on Wednesday, followed by Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood on Thursday and finally Carwyn Jones, the leader of Welsh Labour, on Friday.

This blog post mainly discusses the points I singled out as being noteworthy from a climate and/or transport perspective.

Andrew R. T. Davies (Welsh Conservatives)

Andrew R.T. Davies was asked whether he supported carbon taxes, but didn’t give a straight answer either way. He dodged the question by saying he favoured a mix of low-cost energy sources, which to me sounded like “cut subsidies for renewable electricity generation and keep burning fossil fuels”.

Another question accused Labour of concentrating mostly on the Cardiff area and ignoring the rest of Wales, asking whether the Conservatives would be any different. I may not have been paying full attention at the time, but the only specific project mentioned was making the A40 (in Pembrokeshire, presumably) into a dual carriageway. More capacity for more polluting cars, and speeding up journeys for motorists at the expense of the rail network; not my idea of a good policy.

A few days later, the Welsh Conservatives announced that they intend to try and introduce 80mph speed limits on the M4 and A55, again speeding up journeys for motorists at the expense of the rail network. When will the counter-productive transport policies stop?

Nathan Gill (United Kingdom Independence Party (Wales))

Nathan Gill confirmed my fears that UKIP are a reckless party of environmental suicide. I still accuse both Labour and the Conservatives of similar, but they’re not quite as bad as UKIP.

Happily, one audience member had the courage to dub UKIP’s plan to ignore climate change as their craziest policy yet. Against a statement that almost all scientists agree that current climate change is man-made, Mr Gill tried to defend his position by suggesting that most of those scientists are not climate scientists, and that we should look it up on the internet. So I did, and most climate scientists also seem to agree that we are causing climate change. Even in the unlikely case that humanity is not the cause, consider the other part of Nathan Gill’s argument. He didn’t deny that the climate was changing, but suggested that stopping it was akin to trying to stop the tide coming in. The tide we know about, and can generally allow for. On the contrary, we have no idea what the world will be like if the 2 degree climate threshold is passed. Natural climate fluctuations in the distant past are suspected to have caused mass extinctions, so it is not unreasonable to fear a mass extinction might occur should the current changes to our climate continue. Thus, if we accept Nathan Gill’s stance on climate change we must accept that we are doomed. Thankfully, we don’t have to vote for his party.

On transport, Nathan Gill stated that UKIP preferred the ‘Blue Route’ M4 relief road at £400m to the £1bn second motorway (Labour’s ‘Black Route’). Sadly, this saving on the M4 wasn’t to fund public transport; instead he proposed spending the rest of that £1bn on the A55 and A470, suggesting it was currently easier to drive via England (using motorways) than use the A470.

Nathan also suggested he would break EU law if elected, by making the Welsh government use only Welsh steel. If he did this, would Wales be fined by the EU? Also, a survey has apparently shown that immigration is the second most important issue for voters in the forthcoming election, despite the fact that is not a devolved matter. These are issues for the EU referendum in June; clearly the role of the Welsh Assembly hasn’t been made nearly clear enough to the people of Wales.

Kirsty Williams (Welsh Liberal Democrats)

One of the questions Kirsty Williams was asked was similar to one of those put to Andrew R.T. Davies earlier in the week; regarding paying more attention to / spending more money on, more of Wales than just the Cardiff area. Her response was in stark contrast to the Welsh Conservative leader’s; rather than pledging future road investment she focused on other issues such as education. For example, she stated that her party had in the past achieved a better spread of schools funding across Wales, presumably as a condition of the Liberal Democrats supporting Labour’s budget.

The same focus on other areas was evident when the subject of the M4 came up. Like UKIP, the Lib Dems would scrap the hugely destructive £1bn ‘Black Route’, but would spend the money saved on creating more ‘affordable’ housing. She didn’t say where the houses would be built, but provided they are put somewhere with strong public transport links the policy articulated by Kirsty is by far the most sensible position of all the leaders questioned so far in the BBC’s series. Such a shame then that her party is still being attacked over some of the Tory policies they were unable to block in coalition, particularly university tuition fees. The British public needs to get over this; the tuition fees went up because they voted the Tories in, not because of the Lib Dems.

Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru)

Some of the questions on the fourth evening were quite different to those put to the other four leaders over the week. Nobody else was asked about Bovine TB and the controversial (and apparently futile) measures to eradicate it. Neither did the issue of nuclear power receive as much attention in the other programmes, making this episode the nearest the series came to discussing measures to tackle climate change. Plaid Cymru, it was revealed, are opposed to ‘fracking’, would not open new open-cast coal mines and don’t want to see a new nuclear power station anywhere other than on Anglesey, where they are looking to safeguard jobs following the shutdown of the current plant.

Leanne seemed keen to avoid a coalition with another party following the election, but only ruled out the Conservatives and UKIP as potential coalition partners.

Carwyn Jones (Welsh Labour Party)

The incumbent First Minster was at least the third leader to be asked about the Cardiff-focus of the current Welsh Government. Specifically, in this case (with the programme being broadcast from Llangollen), the question was why North Wales sometimes feels more remote Cardiff Bay than Westminster. Much like the Conservative’s on Monday, the Welsh Labour leader turned to roads in his attempt to address this. Apparently, Labour’s preferred hugely destructive M4 project being funded via borrowing would leave the current roads budget untouched, allowing major work on the A55 as well including a new bridge across the Menai Strait.

While Labour, along with the Tories, seem to be planning the most destructive roads, the Labour leader did at least have something to say about public transport as well. Carwyn Jones announced a ‘North Wales Metro’, to be paid for via a ‘City Deal’, and claimed improvements would come from devolving rail and bus services. Exactly what they would do with the powers if/when they get them devolved was not elaborated on though.

The Missing Party?

There the BBC’s series ended, there was no sixth programme to feature Alice Hooker-Stroud, leader of the Wales Green Party. The recently-started ‘BBC Wales Today’ election tour features a large cut-out figures of the five leaders discussed above in the tent, but Alice Hooker-Stroud is not pictured. Neither UKIP nor the Greens have any seats in the Welsh Assembly, so why does UKIP feature in the BBC’s coverage as much as the four parties who do have seats?

I suppose the BBC do occasionally acknowledge the existence of the Greens. ‘Wales Today’ covered the launch of the Green’s manifesto on Tuesday, just before the UKIP leader’s programme. The BBC will also be including all six main parties in a forthcoming televised debate, but I don’t believe the amount of coverage they are getting in comparison to UKIP is at all fair.

The nearest UKIP will ever get to a sustainable transport policy? Creative Commons photograph of UKIP bus by Ian RobertsToday, UKIP is due to publish their manifesto for the Welsh Assembly election in May. With the election just a few weeks away, right now the party are probably the biggest threat in Britain to the well-being of future generations, and of wildlife. Although they won just one seat at last year’s general election, this was with the deeply flawed ‘First Past The Post’ voting system. Conversely, there is a proportional element to the assembly election, if this is made clear to the electorate then there’s a real chance of UKIP having quite a number of assembly members following the election.

That, to me, is a frightening prospect.

Of course, I am writing this before their new manifesto is published, so cannot know their current policy in full. But I have two documents produced for the Westminster election, their national manifesto and the one produced by UKIP’s Welsh arm.

The latter document doesn’t mention public transport at all, at least not in the section on transport policy (half of which relates to opposing tolls on roads). The only mention comes under the heading ‘economy’ where they say they will cancel HS2.

In fairness, UKIP do seem to have a few sensible policies. Is cancelling HS2 one of them? If HS2’s current planned route is the only option on the table then I have to agree with UKIP, but we probably do need new lines to provide greater rail capacity.

The Runway To Runaway Climate Change. Creative commons photograph of Heathrow airport by ‘Panhard’It is their stance on the environment that is scary. The anti-HS2 policy heads the transport section of the national party’s document, but this followed by an alarming view on London airports: they are in favour of expansion. They claim there is currently a lack of airport capacity in the south-east and propose re-opening a former airport to increase overall airport capacity. Clearly, they don’t care that allowing the aviation sector to emit even more greenhouse gas makes the task of keeping warming under 2 degrees much harder, perhaps even impossible. Not that they recognise the need to do that, the national manifesto also has a section entitled “Housing And The Environment”, which is mostly about housing and doesn’t mention climate change at all. Elsewhere in the document, they propose abolishing the Department for Energy and Climate Change and repealing the Climate Change Act.

But that was last year. Have UKIP cleaned up their act? Obviously, I haven’t seen their new manifesto yet, but unfortunately it doesn’t look good. Apparently:

On Wednesday March 2nd, the Climate Change Commission for Wales hosted their last meeting in its current form. All Welsh political parties were invited to sign a commitment to the Paris Agreement to demonstrate Wales’s commitment to tackling Climate Change. The Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats the Conservatives and the Green Party all signed the pledge, while UKIP declined to sign.

The inspiration for this post, and its title, comes from the shockingly irresponsible stance UKIP has taken here. UKIP’s Mark Reckless, acting as director of policy development for UKIP’s assembly campaign “responded to the request to sign the pledge from the Climate Change Commission for Wales with the one word email – “NO”“. Now do you see why I am frightened by the prospect of UKIP winning many seats in May?

Reckless By Name And Nature: the man who said NO to climate change action pledge. Image by ‘Mobilelinkchecker’ released under a creative commons licenseI’d be surprised if Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives can convince me that they are taking their pledge seriously, but UKIP it seems aren’t even pretending to be doing enough to cut emissions.

The full Climate Change Commission for Wales story reporting the reckless decision Mr Reckless has made can be found here.

When trying to come up with a catchy title for this post, I toyed with several common sayings. “Drop in the ocean”, “reaping the whirlwind””, “tip of the iceberg” and “heads in the sand”; all seemed appropriate to the content of today’s post. Last night on radio 4 two news stories, or possibly three, caught my attention.

Before the storm, Voyager at Carlisle back in AugustThe first was that there has been severe flooding in the north of England, in and around Carlisle. I looked in vain through my Flickr uploads for a suitable image of flooding, but I digress. The cause apparently was a record-breaking amount of rainfall. While we cannot blame any particular severe whether event on climate change, the report stated that this is a record which has been broken several times over the past 15 years. What used to be 1-in-100-year events are now happening in a much shorter space of time. The good news is that nobody seems to be in denial anymore, climate change as a result of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is an accepted fact. Good, now can we please finally get on and take some serious action to deal with it, before it gets really bad? As we have come to expect following these events, the government has defended its investment in flood defence schemes and promised more. That’s all well and good, because greenhouse gas emissions have been high in recent decades and climate effects lag behind emissions (there’s the iceberg/ocean reference). But this is only treating the symptoms, it is high time we treated the cause. And, apparently, we are starting to: this morning I heard that greenhouse gas emissions actually decreased slightly this year compared to last year (largely thanks to China reducing coal consumption), but we need to cut emissions faster.

The second item of note last night, though I’m not sure if it is a separate story, was that the rain had caused a landslip which has closed the West Coast Main Line north of Carlisle, and the weather was so bad Virgin didn’t bother with rail-replacement buses. This morning, I read that lines in north Wales have also been closed due to the weather. The radio suggested passengers at Euston bound for Scotland go to Kings Cross and take the East Coast Main Line instead. At this point my Dad blurted out something about paraffin budgies (that’s what he likes to call aeroplanes, apparently). I said that would only make the problem worse (more planes = more greenhouse gas). Which brings me nicely to the other item of note on radio 4 last night. Apparently, there are rumours a decision on whether to build another runway at Heathrow is likely to be delayed by six months. I think something was said about an environmental review into the proposal. I got the impression that this would focus on local air quality and noise issues around the airport, but if the politicians observing the flooding had any sense they would see aviation for what it is, a huge contributor to the greenhouse gas problem, and rule out airport expansion once and for all. That would be a good first step in the programme of decisive action that we need to curb climate change. Dear Prime Minister, get your head out of the sand, show leadership and boldly stand up and say no to Heathrow expansion..

I don’t comment on the ISIS/Syria situation, the issues appear so complex I have decided it is beyond my comprehension, but George Monbiot (I like quoting him, don’t I) isn’t afraid to find examples from that debate. “During his statement on Syria, Mr Cameron told the House of Commons that “my first responsibility as Prime Minister … is to keep the British people safe”.” Mr Cameron, ISIS is not the only threat out there. We’re not safe while our power stations burn fossil fuels and biomass without carbon-capture technology, while aviation continues to expand, polluting as it goes, and while you’re government promote private motoring by building roads while you cut public transport. Climate change is a grave threat, but we know what we can do about it, it is time to start doing those things.

Dirty past. Valero Pembroke oil refinery, seen from Milford HavenSomebody should buy the prime minister a bicycle. That was an idea suggested to me earlier this evening, or more accurately somebody should blog asking for donations to buy him one, to cycle from number 10 to the houses of parliament. It probably wasn’t a serious suggestion, but it actually might have been a good idea had it been suggested earlier for one simple reason; it would almost certainly be newsworthy. Timed to coincide with this weekend’s Global Climate March, it would have catapulted one the most important good causes into the front pages of all the newspapers and the first item on the TV news. I’m certainly not saying that the media’s celebrity interest is a good thing, but it is a fact and one we could perhaps have taken advantage of.

Some progress has been made towards addressing climate change, for example the UK has slowly been moving to cleaner sources of electricity. But there is more to be done and an ambitious agreement to accelerate at the forthcoming Pairs summit would help spur us on. While decarbonisation of the electricity supply has begun, the government has put a dampener on progress, whether to a slight degree or a large one I am not quite sure, and other sectors (like transport) are lagging behind.

There is so much more we can do, some of it difficult but there are some easy big wins as well. For example, reducing air travel would be a win-win, less flights meaning less high-altitude greenhouse gas emissions AND less disturbance to people living under the flight paths. One way to do this could be introducing taxation for aviation fuel, which would require international agreement but would raise funds for the exchequer to avoid the need to cut subsidies for public transport, for example. Alternatively, the tax could be targeted at frequent flyers, so that the small proportion of the population who are responsible for most flights and poorer people are not prevented from making a single ‘holiday of a lifetime’.

Clean future? Prototype tidal stream turbine in Pembroke DockClimate change is a big problem but an insurmountable one? We’ll only know if we try, and we do have some things in our favour. Most of us humans are good citizens and are happy to work together to help each other out, and to help the myriad of other species that call this planet home so that we and future generations can continue to enjoy their company. Collectively, we also have a lot of brain power; we may have got ourselves into this mess by using our intelligence, but by using it in a slightly different way we can, and have, think of ways to tackle the problem. a need for to accelerate across the board.

Its happening, there are some great initiatives out there which look very promising. Even organisations who you might expect would disagree with science have started to back climate issues, for example the pope emphasising that we have a moral duty to cut greenhouse gas emissions. There are still opponents, who back schemes like Heathrow’s extra runway that could in one fell swoop undo a lot of the good work, but theirs are starting to look like outdated policies. It is high time the government realised that it needs to lead by example in the fight to cut emissions, and we need to follow that example.

Right now, we are not in a good place, but I have a found a quote for that. “If you don’t like where you are, change it! You’re not a tree.” (from Jim Rohn).

Another somewhat tangential post I’m afraid, which doesn’t directly mention Wales and only briefly notes transport, but I’m trying to get lots of posts out this week. I’m doing this to make up for months of nothing and hopefully promote the events this coming weekend which will call on our governments to take serious action to curb climate change.

For years I’ve considered the Conservative party guilty. Of what I’m not quite sure, of ‘being evil’ isn’t quite correct, but my opinion of them leans towards that. Together with the Labour party, I have wondered if they have a secret policy of environmental suicide, intent on causing a mass extinction of most, if not all, life on earth. Ok, that’s a bit extreme, but the way both parties refuse to rule out airport expansion (the frontrunner being Heathrow) suggest that, at best, they don’t care.

But now I wonder if I have been mistaken, the Tories might be guilty but they might instead be innocent, or idiots. This revelation came when I read that prime minister David Cameron has complained to Oxfordshire county council regarding their plans to cut frontline services. I don’t recall whether that story mentioned transport, but the county is reported to be planning to scrap all their subsidised bus services. It turns out then, that Mr Cameron perhaps isn’t the heartless soul I believed him to be, and George Monbiot reports that people care more than we tend to think so maybe Mr Cameron is a nice guy after all. If he is though, he is either an idiot for believing councils can find all the necessary savings through efficiency measures, has been horrendously poorly advised/educated by others or he doesn’t really care and thinks that by complaining to the council he can fool the public into thinking he cares. Councils might have been able to do so initially, but after five years of cuts there can’t be many efficiency savings left to be had, and frontline services now face the axe.

A quote from George Monbiot’s article (linked above): “Billions of decent people tut and shake their heads as the world burns, immobilised by the conviction that no one else cares.” People do care, so let’s get out there at the weekend and demand action to curb climate change. The UK’s Prime Minister is either guilty, innocent (but poorly informed) or an idiot, let’s hope he’s innocent and that we can inform him.

4×24 hours, four days. That’s how long we have before the Aberystwyth ‘Global Climate March’ is due to start*.

On Saturday and Sunday, similar events will be taking place across the globe. Climate change is almost certainly the biggest threat facing life on earth, and governments (certainly those in Westminster and Cardiff Bay) do not appear to be taking the matter sufficiently seriously.

The situation is not hopeless, there are things we can do to prevent climate change, some which would appear to save money (eg. scrapping the plans for a second M4 motorway around Newport and banning future governments from even commissioning feasibility studies into such a thing), yet governments refuse to do this. This is plain reckless and must be stopped, and hopefully a good show of support for the global climate marches at the weekend will win the day.

The Aberystwyth march was originally planned for the Sunday, however I’m happy to report that it currently appears that it will now take place on the Saturday instead. I’m please because it will allow attendees to arrive by bus, the Sunday service being rather poor where it exists and, on most routes, completely non-existent.

Safe hands??? Three of the six parties standing in Ceredigion at this election have their boards out near Aberystwyth.May 7th, 2015, a highly unpredictable general election. What colour of government will we have, and will they command a majority? Some of the Labour leader’s comments suggest a minority Labour government is a real possibility.

The media sometimes describes marginal constituencies as ‘key election battlegrounds’, but can UK general elections be accurately described as wars? Perhaps the media have a point since many of the main parties, while talking sense on other issues, have dangerous policies. Some could undermine the long-term future of life on earth.

Let’s start with Plaid Cymru. Their manifesto states that they oppose the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). This is a sensible position since a component of TTIP is ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) which could allow companies to sue governments for impacting profits. For example, it may encourage privatisation of the NHS or allow tobacco firms to sue governments for banning smoking in public places. In fact, most of Plaid’s manifesto sounds positive at first reading. More worrying is what is missing. Most importantly, they are alarmingly vague about tackling climate change. They promise targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but fail to state those targets. As the biggest threat currently facing life on earth, climate change requires a more robust response. Sorry Plaid.

The environment has been largely neglected in the television coverage too. The sole ‘environment debate’, shown in the middle of the day on 20th April, on the BBC’s ‘Daily Politics’ program, was disappointing. The Liberal Democrat comments on their record in government were the most interesting part of the program. A significant increase in electricity generated from renewable sources was claimed, before they admitted that transport and heating were lagging behind in terms of emission reduction.

Which brings us to transport. I haven’t downloaded the Conservative party manifesto, but they are in favour of airport expansion and plan to spend £15bn on major road upgrades. Surely that is incentivising people to do the wrong thing; they clearly have their priorities wrong. Plaid Cymru are pressing for major road expansion too, but at least they don’t back the (Labour) Welsh Government’s plans to build a second M4 motorway around Newport.

Labour’s Westminster manifesto is not reassuring regarding transport (road and airport expansion look likely) but elsewhere they do claim to recognise the importance of tackling climate change. The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) have analysed non-transport aspects of several manifestos for sustainability, and the Conservative’s score was frighteningly poor. Labour does better, and the Liberal Democrats better still. Unfortunately the LibDems have not ruled out a ‘deal’ with the Conservatives, so votes for the LibDems could lead to a good outcome (eg. a LibDem-Labour coalition) or a mediocre one (another LibDem-Conservative coalition). Either would be hugely preferable to a Conservative majority.

Green and pleasant land? Not if some of the parties can help it.The Tories are bad but, terrifyingly, an even worse option has emerged: UKIP. UKIP have made their stance plain on television: rather than accepting the challenge, they deny that climate change is human-influenced. Even if you think the scientists are wrong, surely it is better to take action to reduce emissions so that, on the off-chance that the scientists are right, we don’t suffer the consequences? And the consequences of getting it wrong will be dire. Maybe this really is war…

I’ve not researched the SNP’s policies but apparently they have not admitted defeat on the issue of independence. They talk about leaving the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island’, so are threatening to destroy Great Britain. People don’t describe themselves as UK-ish. We are Welsh, Scottish, English or British, or a combination such as Welsh-British. In Doctor Who, The Doctor (David Tennant) once said: “Only Britain’s Great”. Please Scotland, you can have all the devolution you like but stop trying to rip our great nation apart.

Perhaps now you see why this election is a minefield. Returning to climate change, you’d think the Green Party would be streets ahead; and they promise to end the national major roads programme so on that basis they are. They promise to stop airport expansion etc. and come closer than any other party to what is needed to tackle climate change, but are not bomb-proof. Their own manifesto quotes the Royal Society (scientists): “global population growth needs to be slowed and stabilised, but this should by no means be coercive” but apparently offers nothing that would curb population growth; instead they propose increasing child benefit. Would removing child benefit if a woman who already has more than one child gets pregnant again be ‘coercive’?

The Saltire In The SkyNot long now… In just 17 days time, on the 18th of September (2014), Scotland will vote on whether to become an independent country. Although most of the predictions say that Scotland will remain part of the union, I am slightly concerned that the outcome of the referendum could be a surprising ‘Yes to independence’. While I am in favour of devolution, to the maximum extent possible, both at home in Wales and in Scotland, I do not want to see the United Kingdom broken up.

To start with my most trivial concern, removing the Scottish Saltire (Saint Andrew’s white cross on blue) from the Union Flag would ruin the appearance of the flag. Of course it is not clear whether Scottish independence would in fact result in a change to the flag, but I do think it would be rather dull without the blue background.

Fossil fuel extraction in the far northThere are far greater concerns however. The north sea oil and gas reserves have featured quite prominently in the debate over Scotland’s future; economics however is not one of my strong suits. I cannot understand why the economy is regarded as such an important election issue and what effects it, but as far as the Scottish independence referendum is concerned the gist seems to be if Scotland can extract enough oil and gas it will have a strong economy. As George Monbiot once said: there are enough fossil fuels left to fry us all. If Scotland becomes independent, it may well be founded on the basis of the fundamentally unsustainable continued burning of fossil fuels.

We are stronger together, in the face of threats to the natural world and national security alike; perhaps even the economy although, as I’ve already suggested, I really don’t have a clue about that. Thus, I say, the United Kingdom needs to stand united, stand tall and face it all together. They say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, I hope this is true and that we can work together to counter all the threats the world throws at us. Again, as Monboit said we need to leave the fossil fuels in the ground, an independent Scotland reliant on extracting fossil fuels for its prosperity is all we need.Departing The Kingdom? Well, this is a transport-centered blog, had to stick a train photo in somewhere
I don’t often agree with members of the Conservative party, but for once the prime minister has said something I agree with wholeheartedly: Scotland, “we want you to stay”.